Why Lower Phishing Volume Doesn't Mean Lower Cyber Risk for the Education Sector
As education institutions rely more heavily on digital tools to support learning and daily operations, cyber attacks can have far-reaching consequences. Schools hold sensitive information, including student records, login credentials, Social Security numbers, and financial data. Successful attacks can also delay grades, interrupt instruction, block access to learning platforms, disrupt payroll, cancel classes, and prevent families from reaching critical services.
Recent research found that e-mail phishing attacks against the education sector decreased by about 66% over the past year. But the broader findings show that decline does not equate to reduced cyber risk.
Across all sectors analyzed in the report, 95% of phishing activity traveled through encrypted online connections, the same type of protected connections used to access legitimate websites. Education organizations also encountered roughly 1.6 billion blocked attacks hidden within encrypted internet traffic.
The findings point to a shift in how attackers operate. Rather than relying only on large volumes of generic phishing e-mails, they are increasingly using fake login pages, compromised accounts, malicious websites, and other methods that may not begin with a traditional e-mail. They are also using artificial intelligence (AI) to create more convincing messages, websites, and impersonation attempts.
These attacks can quickly become learning disruptions and community-wide operational crises. As threat actors adopt more targeted and convincing tactics, education leaders need practical ways to reduce risk without undermining the open, connected environments their institutions depend on.
Make Cybersecurity Part of the Education Community
One of the most important steps in limiting disruption is helping students and employees understand how cyber attacks are changing.
Students are naturally curious. That curiosity may lead them to click suspicious links, use proxy sites, or try tools that bypass content filters without realizing they may be exposing education systems and information to risk. Teachers and administrators face similar challenges as they manage crowded inboxes, vendor requests, parent communications, research tools, and digital learning platforms.
Cyber hygiene refers to the routine habits that help keep accounts, devices, and data secure. Strong passwords, multifactor authentication, software updates, careful review of sender addresses and links, and quick reporting of unusual messages all help reduce risk.
These habits matter even more as attackers use generative AI to create personalized messages and realistic copies of familiar education websites and forms. They can also make a message appear to come from a superintendent, principal, teacher, colleague, or vendor. In some cases, manipulated audio or video may be used to impersonate someone trusted.
Attackers can time these campaigns around busy academic periods, such as enrollment, tuition deadlines, financial aid cycles, testing windows, and the start of a semester, when digital activity is high and users are moving quickly.
Schools should make cyber hygiene education a regular part of the academic experience. Students and employees should know how to recognize suspicious activity, verify unusual requests, and report concerns quickly. These habits cannot replace strong security protections, but they can help prevent one mistake from becoming an institution-wide disruption.
Understand What Keeps the Institution Running
Education leaders need a clear picture of the technology and services their institutions depend on each day. IT teams should identify the systems most critical to learning and operations, including student information systems, financial platforms, learning management tools, login services, payroll, transportation, meals, research data, and family communications.
This helps leaders decide where limited staff, time, and funding should be focused, beginning with the services that would cause the greatest harm if they became unavailable.
Institutions should also understand how these services depend on one another. A learning platform may rely on login tools, student records, file storage, payment systems, or third-party applications. A disruption in one area can quickly affect another.
For example, if a central login service goes offline, students, teachers, and faculty may lose access to several otherwise separate learning and administrative tools. Understanding these connections allows institutions to prepare backup plans and reduce the chance that one problem shuts down multiple services.
Limit the Damage a Compromised Account Can Cause
Because education networks are built around openness, schools and universities need a way to verify access without limiting collaboration and connectivity.
A Zero Trust approach is based on a straightforward idea: Logging in once should not give someone unlimited access to education systems. Institutions should verify that users are who they claim to be and give them access only to the information and applications required for their roles.
A student, teacher, payroll employee, researcher, and outside vendor should not have the same level of access. If one account is compromised, limiting its permissions can help contain the attack and prevent it from spreading to other systems.
Zero Trust may seem daunting for resource-strapped districts and institutions, but implementation does not need to happen all at once. Beginning with their most critical services, education IT teams can review who has access, remove permissions that are no longer needed, require additional identity checks for sensitive information, and gradually expand those protections.
This phased approach strengthens security over time without disrupting the learning, collaboration, and services their communities rely on.
Keep Learning Moving
When an attack hits, the impact is felt well beyond IT. Classes can be interrupted, services delayed, employees pulled away from students, and families cut off from resources they depend on.
A lower phishing count may look like progress, but it captures only one part of the threat facing the education sector. Leaders should instead consider whether their institutions can recognize suspicious activity, protect their most important systems, limit what a compromised account can access, and continue serving students during an incident. The goal is not simply to block more phishing e-mails. It is to prevent one successful attempt from interrupting learning across an entire education community.